Irish Free Software Organisation

We are pleased that the Paper recognises the role of users in driving innovation (§7.2). Software in general provides rich ground for innovation; anybody with the relevant skills can become an innovator, with no large capital outlay being required. Because users of Free Software have the right to learn from, modify, and build on it, Free Software is uniquely placed to enable the innovative transformations described in the Paper. Indeed, this ability to create new value from existing work was part of the motivation for the formalisation of Free Software as a defined idea over twenty-five years ago.